Curls
by EllaNoble
Summary: You'd never think that an unbreakable bond could be formed by brushing your daughter's hair every day.


I find that it's the small things that happen in our lives that we tend to remember more later on in life. Those minuscule but precious moments spent with family and loved ones that make our hearts swell with love and affection.

I remember, Lily was born with the curliest mass of red hair I had ever seen. It was like a spring, the strands twisting around in intricate ringlets or popping out all over the place like fire-engine red split ends.

Point being, if managed well it could be beautiful. And as a proud mother and Lily being my only daughter, it was a necessity that she sit in my lap every day while I fought with every tangle in her wild mane.

Due to screams and loud sounds of protesting (not always from Lily,) Harry and the boys tended to avoid the living room each morning when I decided to strap Lily down and go to battle with her hair. At the time, I didn't really appreciate the lack of support, but as I look back as an old woman, I realize that that hour a day really helped Lily and I to become closer than we would have if she didn't have uncooperative locks.

On a good day we would talk of all sorts of things; of how more than a few times when we visited Bill and Fleur's house in the summer did she catch Teddy and Victoire kissing and holding hands in the backyard. I would nod and act severely surprised and intrigued, when really every adult in the family knew the two were destined for each other since they were toddlers. Then she would giggle and ask me not to tell anyone so she wouldn't get in trouble with her cousin. I always said her secret was safe with me.

"Bad hair days" normally came round when James or Albus had already annoyed her earlier that morning and she was in a foul mood, and she wasn't as patient to get her hair brushed as she normally would be. She would kick and scream and shout (not saying that I was completely innocent either) and after she was done with her tantrum I'd scold her and tell her some rubbish about respecting others even when she's angry. I didn't know at the time that she was actually absorbing what I was saying, and she put what I told her to use.

And then she just...grew up. Suddenly she was "too old to have Mummy brush her hair", and she was off to Hogwarts, leaving my mornings torturously empty with nothing to do than to try and persuade Harry to let me pin his hair up in barrettes. He actually did let me, once, but it didn't last long when I tried to take a picture to send to Ron and Hermione by owl.

I saw how as she got older her curls kind of deflated, becoming more wavy and manebgable. She was suddenly not the freckled nine-year-old I once knew, but a striking beauty with a tendency to attract men like moths to a porch light. In a flash I had become the Mum who needed to scope out boyfriends when she brought them around to meet us, and would worry when it was three minutes after her curfew and she still wasn't home.

All that time I wondered how we managed to be so close when in reality it all had to do with the simple task of brushing her hair every day.

I remember clearly the day of her wedding. The spring air was crisp that morning, and birds sang as if they knew it was one of the most important days of Lily's life. It was held at a beautiful church in London with Biblical scenes on the stained glass windows and rows of dark wooden pews with plush white cushions.

Eventually after Lily nearly had a heart attack trying to find her wedding gown that James aptly hid in the organ bench, she got her makeup done and was almost ready - except that her hair had gone frizzy and haywire from stress and sweat.

"What am I going to do?" she cried pitifully, cradling her head in her hands. "I'm getting married in an hour and my hair looks like I just walked through a humidity paradise!"

"Shh," I said soothingly, standing behind her and pulling her shoulders back so she would sit up straight and look at herself in the mirror. "Keep your knickers on; I'll do your hair."

Her relieved and grateful smile was the OK I needed, so I picked up a comb, fond memories flooding back in to my mind.


End file.
